One Last Bite

Planning your final meal is efficient (if macabre), but you don’t always get what you want. A survey of last suppers of the famous, from Elvis to Ernest

By Jeff Ruby

Published May 21, 2007

This month’s Best New Restaurants got me thinking: Everyone loves to talk about what he’d eat for his last meal on earth. A few years back, I declared mine, in print, to be friend chicken from Harold’s Chicken Shack on 53rd Street; now I’d go with the sukiyaki at Chiyo, page 76. But history has shown that the Last Meal is a wish rarely fulfilled, particularly when the end comes unexpectedly. Once I took a look at the final repasts of celebrities and compared those meals with the celebs’ favorite dishes in life, I realized my chances of getting the sukiyaki, much less the fried chicken, were not good.

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What They Loved

What They Got

SADDAM HUSSEIN (1937-2006)

Raisin Bran Crunch, chips. “He’d eat a family-size bag of Doritos in ten minutes,” said one of his American guards, as quoted in a 2005 GQ article.

Boiled chicken and rice, several cups of hot water laced with honey, according to deadmaneating.com

LIBERACE (1919-87)

Fettuccine Alfredo from De Stefano’s in Las Vegas

Cream of wheat cereal made with half-and-half, seasoned with brown sugar, per his former cook

Soft-boiled eggs, bacon, toast with marmalade, orange juice, and coffee, as reported in The Day Kennedy Was Shot, by Jim Bishop (Funk & Wagnalls, 1968)

CLEOPATRA (69-30 B.C.)

Figs

Figs and an asp

ELVIS PRESLEY (1935-77)

Meat loaf, cheeseburgers, peanut butter and banana sandwiches, all-Jell-O diets. When Elvis was hospitalized with colon issues in the seventies, his cook claims, The King begged for sauerkraut and wiener sandwiches.

Ice cream and cookies, according to Last Suppers, by James L. Dickerson (Lebhar and Friedman, 1999)

MOHANDAS GANDHI (1869-1948)

A diet strong in wheat and rice, dry cereals, raw fruits and vegetables

Goat’s milk, cooked vegetables, oranges, and a concoction of ginger, sour lemons, and strained butter with the juice of aloe, per yourlastmeal.blogspot.com

ERNEST HEMINGWAY (1899-1961)

Raw onion sandwiches doused with ketchup; steak and potatoes

New York strip steak, baked potato, caesar salad, and a Bordeaux, according to Dickerson

ALLEN GINSBERG (1926-97)

Soup. A 2001 New Yorker article said Ginsberg loved making soup so much, he had a ledge installed outside his kitchen window where he could cool his 12-gallon stockpot.

Fish chowder, per The New Yorker

MARILYN MONROE (1926-62)

The upscale French fare at Romanoff’s in Hollywood

Guacamole and spicy meatballs at a Mexican buffet, chased with Champagne, according to Dickerson

JOHN LENNON (1940-80)

Vegetarian and macrobiotic food. Then again, musician Ronnie Hawkins has always said that when Lennon and Yoko Ono stayed at his home in 1969, he caught them sneaking bologna from the fridge late at night.